How does SSI work?
SSI is a bit like using your server to copy and paste bits of documents together to create a web page. When the visitor requests a web page from the server the following steps will happen: • The server looks at the document’s extension to decide whether this is a static HTML document and can be sent straight to the browser without any modification (.htm or .html), or if it may contain SSI commands and will require extra processing (.shtml). • The server then reads through the document word by word looking for any SSI tags. • When it finds an SSI tag it will attempt to run the command. • It will then either insert the results of each command, or an error message if there were problems, and merge it all into one document. • This merged document is then sent to the visitor’s web browser.
